


Iconography (The Teen Runway Remix)

by likeadeuce



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Diana Ross - Freeform, Five is busy being lost in the time stream, Gay Icons, Gen, Tab Hunter, The Ghost of Sal Mineo, james dean - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26727331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: Coming out in a magazine interview may have made Klaus a gay icon, but there's no reason his siblings can't be iconic too.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29
Collections: Remix Revival 2020





	Iconography (The Teen Runway Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Redrikki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Iconic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19741759) by [Redrikki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki). 



> Content notes: References to the real lives of some Hollywood icons who died tragically. Also, non-graphic reference to violence against animals in the context of a movie plot point.
> 
> Thanks to Sigrid, Renata, and DestroytheMeek for beta reading.

**Number One (Luther)**

Luther crossed his arms, jutted his chin forward in a way that emphasized the squareness of his jaw, and looked down on Klaus; these were all things that Luther did very very well. Klaus was, admittedly, making the task of looking down on him easier by lying on the floor, on his back, hands crossed behind his head. That angle should have made the chin jutting trickier, but Luther pulled it off. It was this kind of skill that made Luther the Umbrella Academy’s Number One.

“I just have to say,” Luther was saying, instead of just saying the thing he just had to say, which was also very Luther. “I have to say that this is something you could have discussed with the rest of your family before you decided to blurt it out to a _Teen Runway_ reporter in the middle of what was supposed to be a group interview.”

“I probably should have.” Klaus made sure to sound like he was agreeing, just to see that combination of surprise and smugness that came over Luther on the rare occasions that one of his siblings validated him. “We could have discussed it at a family meeting.”

“Exactly!” Luther crowed, but his triumph lasted just long enough to register Klaus’s smirk.

Klaus sat up and stretched his arms over his head, cracking his knuckles. His skinny chest was bare, and he pulled his knees up against his body. “It is my fondest wish one day to find a man who loves me the way that my brother Luther loves a family meeting.”

“We’re a family!” Luther protested. “What else should we do?”

Honestly, Klaus did not know much about how other people’s families worked. He wasn’t sure they relied as much on meetings for communication as Luther seemed to think, though they presumably relied less on passive-aggressive comments made during teen magazine interviews than the Hargreeves did. Klaus had an idea that kids in abnormal families were supposed to learn about normal families from watching sitcoms. When Klaus had time for TV, he mostly watched _Will & Grace_ or _Sailor Moon_. He was quite sure these shows fed his soul more than _The Brady Bunch_ would have, but it was true they didn’t provide much guidance in the ways of conventionality.

“Are you really that mad because I didn’t tell you I’m gay?” Klaus asked. “Or are you mad that when our group interview comes out next month, it’s going to be a Number Four exclusive?”

“Don’t you mean a Séance exclusive?” Luther tried the name out in his mouth. “Séance, gay icon.”

“Aww, Luther. You can definitely be a gay icon if you put your mind to it.” Klaus tilted his head. “All-American jaw. Rock Hudson? Or, wait, wait. Tab Hunter.” 

“I don’t know who Tab Hunter is. But it doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“Oh, I don’t know. That guy has lived a life.” Klaus happened to be in the middle of reading the actor’s confessional autobiography, which was full of juicy queer goodness about mid-20th century Hollywood. Admittedly, Tab and Luther’s jawlines were much more similar than (so far) their life experiences. Still, Klaus didn’t entirely want to let the notion go now that he had grabbed it. “I’m not saying that I think you’re a closeted gay man.”

“Good! I’m not! Just -- I didn’t mean to say ‘good’. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with it. It just happens that I’m not -- that I feel --”

Klaus crossed his arms over his knees and leaned forward in his best “Tell Auntie Klaus all about it” pose.

Luther might have been about to say something, maybe a thing he thought everyone didn’t already know about his crush on Allison. Then he shook his head. “I don’t exactly have hidden layers, Klaus. What you see is what you get.”

“I don’t know, Number One. I’m not convinced anyone is that perfect and tall and blonde and All-American.” 

“I’m not American, but that’s not exactly secret.” He sounded a little weird and defensive about this. “Dad adopted me from England.”

“And isn’t that in itself suspicious? You’re fifteen years old and closing in on six foot five. I didn’t think they grew people that big in the UK. All those world wars and, what’s it called. Rationing.”

Luther gave Klaus the kind of confused look that his siblings always gave him when they realized he’d read a book outside the genre of _Tab Hunter Confidential_. “If that’s the weirdest thing you can come up with about the way we all were born. . .”

“Not the weirdest,” Klaus said. “Just one more thing to consider. Look, think about the interview this way. As long as everybody’s focused on my little revelation, that’s time they aren’t spending trying to dig into everything else this family is hiding.” 

“What is it I’m supposed to be hiding?”

 _Fear_ , thought Klaus. “I don’t know,” said Klaus. “If it makes you feel better, I’m sure it will turn out to be extremely boring.”

**Number Two (Diego)**

Diego wrinkled his nose in concentration and let two knives fly from his hand, across the courtyard, and bury themselves in the target.

He turned to Klaus, looking smug. Diego, like Luther, featured “smug” as one of his favorite expressions. Unlike Luther, Diego never felt the need to mix smugness with any humbler emotions. Maybe because he didn’t have all that blondness and height to apologize for; maybe because he was a certified paranoid motherfucker who didn’t bother to lie about the things that scared him.

“Gorgeous throw,” said Klaus, who had no interest in knives and thus no ego on the line in whatever competition Diego was trying to turn this into. For good measure, Klaus added: "Iconic."

"That reminds me --" Diego spun toward him and pointed. "Luther said you're playing a game where you assign all of us to be gay icons. I get to be Jimmy Dean, right?"

"No," Klaus said firmly. "Not unless you mean the sausage king -- in which case, that's between you and your god. But if you mean the Hollywood legend, who departed this earthly plane on September 30, 1955. . .certainly not. If anyone gets that honor, it should be Ben, who left us when he too was young and beautiful --"

"I don't know what you want," said Ben, who had been slouching against a tree, watching Diego like he thought _he_ definitely would have given their brother a run for his money in a knife throwing competition. "But the way you are sucking up to me right now makes me suspicious." 

Diego, of course, could not hear Ben, which allowed Klaus to continue soliloquizing, almost without a pause. "-- not corrupted by age or vice or the indifference of a fickle public, the way the rest of us are going to die."

"Assuming we'll all live that long seems wildly optimistic," said Diego. He threw three more knives. 

"You could be Switchblade Sal Mineo. Star-making performance in _Rebel Without a Cause_ , same as Dean, but then outlived him. Had trouble making the transition out of teen roles. Lasted long enough to almost lose his baby fat and die sordidly. Stabbed in an alley!" 

"I think I'll pass on that one," Diego said drily, then frowned. "I remember Sal Mineo in ‘Rebel.’ Didn't his character murder puppies?"

"No worries, brother of mine," Klaus soothed him. "I am absolutely certain every puppy you ever kill will have had it coming."

**Number Three (Allison)**

Allison frowned as she adjusted the wide, purple turban that wound around her head. Then she nodded resolutely, struck a pose, and gave a dazzling smile into the mirror. 

“I think it’s just beautiful,” she said.

“Of course it’s beautiful,” Klaus answered. “It’s got my sister in it.”

“Not the dress.” Allison dropped the pose, shook her head at him, and quirked a toothy grin that transformed the dazzling powerful woman back into Klaus’s sweet, optimistic fifteen-year-old sister. “I’m talking about you, Klaus. What you’re doing for other kids like you. It’s a beautiful gesture that shows off your beautiful soul.”

This was Allison, so achingly sincere in her determination to see the good in others that she couldn’t contemplate the existence of someone like -- well, like Klaus. When his brothers mocked or doubted or suspected him, Klaus gave back as good as he got. It was Allison’s utter lack of guile that made him want to scream, “Are you kidding me here?? I’m just a petty selfish dickweed who said a thing in a fit of pique to show up all my siblings and see how Dad would react!!” (Was that true? Was it truer than any other possible interpretation that could be put on Klaus’s actions? Being around Allison almost made Klaus want to like himself.)

For Allison’s sake, Klaus tried to think of what an unselfish person would say at this moment. (Was deliberately taking unselfish actions any different from being an unselfish person? Klaus couldn’t think of any unselfish people to ask, aside from Allison herself. Mom and Pogo were the only others who came to mind, and, since they were technically a compassionate robot and a sentient gorilla, Klaus wasn’t sure he could count them as people.)

What the purely theoretical unselfish Klaus decided to do was turn his attention back to Allison. “You,” he said, “are beautiful inside and outside, and you have chosen your icon well.” And so she had: the flowing yet form-fitting electric purple dress, the astonishing headwrap, the enormous fuzzy shawl. Klaus wasn’t sure how she had assembled all the components but now she was the Diana Ross of _Mahogany_ and she was absolutely going to kill this audition.

“Thank you,” Allison said, and then she must have remembered Klaus’s advice that showing too much gratitude was basically the same thing as apologizing, and icons didn’t apologize, because she shifted back into her fierce Diana face. “I’m not sure it’s quite the look for _Dreamgirls_ , which is based on the early Diana, but. . .”

“But you walk in like that and you’ll blow the casting director’s mind.”

Allison slipped into her sweet, uncertain sister look again. “Don’t make this audition into a huge thing. It’s basically just a community theater production. I don’t know if it’s even worth risking --”

“Risking what, honey? I sat there in the interview and I told my truth, and Dad has never been anything less than supportive.” Klaus figured this was literally true in the sense that “supportive” was not a thing you could assign a numerical value to. Dad had also been puzzled, condescending and manipulative, but those weren’t precisely measurable, either. Who was to say which reaction Dad had displayed “less”?

“Right. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Allison brought the Diana face back, and its resolve didn’t quite gel with the weaseliness of her words. That was probably because they were Klaus’s words, which he had said to her last month when she’d decided on this course of action. (Unbeknownst to Allison, this was around the same time Klaus was deciding to come out to _Teen Runway_.) Dad didn’t want Allison to be an actress, but he hadn’t particularly wanted Klaus to be queer, either, and yet he was being, probably, as supportive as he knew how to be. They’d get through it; some days, Klaus believed that.

In most circumstances, it would have been hard for Allison to sneak out of the mansion unnoticed, dressed in the _Mahogany_ getup. That was why she left through the front door, with Klaus. “Klaus is taking me to a party” could explain literally anything Allison might decide to wear on her body. Also, everyone would be too busy speculating about Klaus to wonder what Allison was up to.

**Number Four (Klaus)**

Ben was not wild about the implications of Klaus’s newfound gay icon status. 

“Am I going to have to hang around you constantly through a whole experimental phase?” he asked. 

“Calm down, you perv,” Klaus said, daubing a red streak across his right cheek. “Nobody’s making you watch.”

“Oh really? You mean nobody’s making me watch all the sex you’re not having? I was talking about the makeup. Who are you supposed to be anyway?”

Klaus whirled the chair around, horrified, and gestured at the outline of a lightning bolt down the side of his face. “Hello? Bowie?”

“I recognize the imagery you’re ripping off there, dumbass,” Ben said. “I’m talking about your whole deal. It’s less Bowie than ‘bass player in some shitty emo band.’”

“Emo!” Klaus protested. “Do you even know the difference between emo and pop punk?”

“Of course not!” Ben answered proudly. “No normal person does!” 

**Number Five (Five)**

Klaus tried to channel James Dean once. Literally. He sneaked out of the mansion to see a traveling exhibit of allegedly authentic Hollywood memorabilia and stood by the case of a jacket that Dean had supposedly worn on the set of _Rebel_. It wasn’t the famous red jacket from the movie, just a jacket this long dead mumbly guy from Indiana had maybe put on once. Whatever it was, there wasn’t enough essence clinging to it that could communicate anything over the distance of years. Or maybe Dean just didn’t want to talk to Klaus. Klaus didn’t exactly blame him.

The same exhibit had a tie that Sal Mineo had (again, supposedly) worn in the film. Klaus put a hand on the plaque by the display case. He thought, “Well, why not?” and tried to summon the spirit of the sad teenage killer of puppies who at least got to die in Dean’s arms. 

“That’s not really me, you know,” a voice said behind him. “That’s just a kid I played in a movie once.”

“What do you think an icon is?” Klaus turned and tried to focus on the blurry ectoplasm that might have been the spirit of a two-time Academy Award nominee. “Harsh reality though it may be, nobody really would have cared what you were like at thirty-seven if you hadn’t gone and got stabbed in an alley. They mostly care if the stories about you and Dean hooking up are true.”

“Jesus Christ, were you trying to summon me thinking we could have a talk? If so, you’re really bad at this.” The ghost blinked away without another word.

*

After Five disappeared, Klaus tried channeling him sometimes, too. Frequently, in the months right after it happened, but also, later, on the days Klaus might accidentally get clean and/or sober for long enough. The fact that calling on his missing brother’s dead spirit never worked should have helped him believe that Five was really alive out there somewhere. Mostly, though, it made Klaus think that he wasn’t good enough to find the soul of his (other) dead brother. Then he’d get high again. 

**Number Six (Ben)**

Ben flexed in front of the mirror, shirtless in black, high-waisted pants. Klaus couldn’t see any reflection of his ghostly brother, but who knew what Ben could see.

“Look, I’m not making you be Dean if you don’t want to be Dean,” Klaus said. “But Bruce Lee isn’t really what I’d classify as a gay icon. Have you considered B.D. Wong?”

“Good God, Klaus, stop being so racist.

“B.D. Wong is cool!”

“Sure, fine, he dresses cool or whatever. But like you get mad if I mix up emo and pop punk but you think you can switch me between two completely different Chinese guys -- I’m Korean, by the way -- just so you can keep playing your stupid gay icon game?”

“Good point,” Klaus said. “Sorry.” 

Ben looked surprised Klaus had apologized, then looked suspicious that Klaus probably only apologized because he wanted something. Then he frowned. “What about Vanya?”

“Jodie Foster,” Klaus answered. “Duh.”

“No, I mean -- when’s the last time you actually talked to Vanya? Because the magazine finally came today and I’m not sure she’s taking your revelation so well.” Ben gestured at the wall. It was shaking.

**Number Seven (Vanya)**

Vanya hadn’t been in attendance at the _Teen Runway_ interview because, as far as the media world was concerned, she wasn’t part of the superheroic Umbrella Academy. The magazine itself didn’t actually come out until a month after they’d done the interview. So no one had seen it until today, although everyone who had been in the room knew exactly what Klaus had said. (Check that: everyone remembered what it was they thought Klaus had said, though once the thing was printed and in the world, Klaus himself would be uncertain about which words had actually come out of his mouth in which order, and so he couldn’t even claim he had been misquoted.)

After the interview happened, they talked about it but only in roundabout ways. They talked about Klaus’s admittedly by now entirely tiresome gay icon game. But since Klaus wasn’t planning to do anything about what he’d said until the magazine itself came out (if Klaus did anything too gay it would spoil the exclusive? This might not have made complete sense to Klaus, but whenever Dad or Luther explained it to him, it almost sort of did), there wasn’t a good deal of direct conversation about it.

And so, Vanya found out Klaus was gay when she read it in Allison’s copy of _Teen Runway_. Then she ripped the magazine to shreds and made her room shake.

Klaus was the one who got to her first. (It was weird: everyone knew Vanya didn’t have powers. Everyone also knew that when Vanya got upset, odd and frightening things could happen. These understandings lived side by side in Klaus’s mind.)

“Vanya?” he asked, hovering cautiously in her doorway. “Vanya! Are you okay?”

Vanya looked up at him, tears in her eyes, and said, “You like boys?”

Klaus wasn’t immediately sure why this would be the thing to make Vanya so furious. He didn’t think she had anything against gay people -- whatever you could say about Dad, he hadn’t raised them to be homophobic, and Vanya had even played along a bit with the gay icon game. She just, apparently, didn’t have the context for what inspired it because she’d been left out of the interview. So that must be it, as it always was with Vanya. “I’m sorry,” Klaus said sheepishly. He moved cautiously toward her, and crouched beside the desk chair, submissive and apologetic. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Dad--" 

“Dad,” Vanya interrupted. So much spite in that single syllable; it made Klaus think that he and his sister had much more in common that he realized. Then she looked straight at him and said, “I like girls, you know.” 

“Vanya!” Whatever Klaus had expected, it wasn’t this. This was the weirdest, greatest way this conversation could possibly have gone. “Does anyone else know? Does Dad?”

“No. Not yet.” 

“I’m glad you felt like you could tell me. That’s really brave. Any girls in particular?”

She shook her head. “Not really.” Well, Jesus, how many girls could Vanya even know? There were other girls in orchestra with her, but if she hung out with them outside of rehearsal, Klaus had never heard about it. 

This was all cool, though. Queer in theory generally preceded queer in practice -- or it was going that way for Klaus anyway. That was the whole point of gay icons, wasn’t it? To teach confused kids that there was a better way.

“Well, you’ve got to have a type.” He picked up the surviving fragments of _Teen Runway_ and opened to a random page. Blondes, brunettes. . . it was a place to start. He sat on Vanya’s bed and patted the bedspread beside him. “Come show Auntie Klaus what you like.”

Ben sighed, turned his back to them, and rested his head against the wall. “You are really,” Ben said, “severely missing the point.”

*

Years later, Klaus got his hands on a copy of Vanya’s tell-all, _Extra Ordinary_. He immediately took it to his group therapy session to gasp as he skimmed for the parts that mentioned him specifically. (He was in rehab, to be fair; where was he going to socialize and lament his sister’s cruelty _but_ in group therapy?). But later, when he had time to think more clearly, he searched in vain for any reference to what Vanya had told him that day. Yes, she mentioned being left out of the _Teen Runway_ interview, and she certainly found room to imply that Klaus had come out in a fit of pique in order to show up his siblings and see how Dad would react. (Now where had Klaus encountered that theory?)

But any reference to the real reason she had (claimed to be) upset -- any reference to Vanya’s own romantic or sexual life at all -- had been neatly erased from the narrative. So Vanya’s tell-all was only a “tell-some” after all. 

Of course, it didn’t matter now, he thought, setting Vanya’s book aside. After reading what she had written -- about him, about all of them -- Klaus had no intention of ever speaking to her again.

It wasn't like they had ever really been a family.

**Author's Note:**

> You can see the Diana Ross ensemble that Allison is mimicking here: https://fashionreverie.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Collages820.jpg
> 
> Since I named the magazine "Teen Runway" instead of "Teen Vogue," one can reasonably extrapolate that "Umbrella Academy takes place in the "Devil Wears Prada" universe. You're welcome


End file.
